Living as a de facto with her partner may suit Julia Gillard, but does that make her a good role model for others?

By Bettina Arndt

Julia Gillard doesn't want to move into the Lodge until she gets a democratic tick of approval. Or so she says. Maybe the real reason she is stalling is to test the waters about public reaction to moving her first bloke in there with her.

Most media commentators are relaxed about a de facto first couple. Why not, they say, everyone's doing it. What's the big deal about living together?

They are right about the fact cohabitation - what some call "marriage lite" - is changing the social map. Census figures show the proportion of adults in de facto relationships more than doubled between 1986 and 2006. With other countries showing similar shifts, many social scientists studying this trend conclude marriage lite is not a change for the better.

It's fine for Gillard - a 48-year-old woman - to live with her bloke. Yet as a popular role model for women, her lifestyle choice may influence other women into making big mistakes about their lives.

Most Australian conservative commentators are thoroughly freaked by Ms Gillard's far-Left background. But there is little of that to see in her deeds or policy positions whilst in government. Both Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan started out on the Left and a Rightward drift is in fact normal as people get older and wiser. I suspect that we are seeing quite a lot of that in Julia. It may also be worth noting that she owes her ascent to PM not to her party's Left but to its Right.

Such a drift has certainly happened before in the Australian Labor Party. Former Queensland Premier Ned Hanlon is a good example of that. Starting out as a Leftist firebrand he ended up so far Right he was almost out of sight. He even used police to crush a strike. I can't remember even Joh Bjelke Petersen doing that. The Labor party is tribal, however, so Laborites still honour him, rather incredibly. A major new hospital building in Brisbane was named after him not long ago by the State Labor government.

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard says she does not support legalising gay marriage in Australia. Labor policy on gay marriage will remain the same under her prime ministership, Ms Gillard told Austereo show this morning. "We believe the Marriage Act is appropriate in its current form, that is recognising that marriage is between a man and a woman, but we have as a government taken steps to equalise treatment for gay couples," Ms Gillard said.

Asked if that was also her personal view, Ms Gillard said it was.

The new Prime Minister was left waiting on air while Kyle and Jackie played a song - Gettin' Over you by David Guetta featuring Fergie. "I can listen to a song," Ms Gillard said, when Kyle expressed concern it might be inappropriate to leave her waiting. The choice of song wasn't quite to her taste, however. "I'm a really kind of an eighties dag," she said.

Ms Gillard said she would do her best to be frank with the Australian public in her new role. "I think when you're doing something as complicated as being Prime Minister, there are days when people are going to look at what you're doing and go, 'That's fantastic,' and there are going to be other days when they look at what you're doing and say, 'Why on earth did she do that?'," Ms Gillard said.

"So I'm not going to try and promise people everything's going to be smooth sailing and they're going to be applauding at the end of each day because the job's too tough for that, but I'll be trying my best to be as frank as I can with the Australian people about the challenges we face."

Asked if she would be outlawing redheaded jokes now that she was Prime Minister, Ms Gillard laughed and said she would still allow them. "But expect to get a response when you do," she said.

News.com.au - A FORCE of about 700 US and Afghan troops has killed up to 150 Taliban insurgents in a major offensive along eastern Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. The US-led operation, which began on Sunday, was one of the largest yet in the region around Kunar province, said the newspaper, which cited US officials as calling it ``one of the most intense battles of the past year'' in Afghanistan, the Washington Post reports.

In a statement on Sunday, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said more than 600 ISAF and Afghan troops were pursuing al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Kunar and that "a number of insurgents" had been killed. Two US troops had been killed in the battle, according to ISAF, which had no immediate update to offer today.

Never fails to amaze me, western military forces operating far from home in the most hostile of environments, but still kicking ass. It's something that I think far too many westerners are ignorant of and simply take for granted.

Just think about, which other culture on this earth can send men to a foreign land deeply hostile to them, establish military bases, supply them with food, equipment, healthcare, weapons and all the other logistical support they need while fighting tooth and nail against a deadly, unrelenting enemy?

Another thing to be remembered is that the westerner is actually being nice to his enemies, he's holding back, western civilization has the ability to turn the entire place into a radioactive wasteland and catch the Nicks game after wards but he chooses not to, he chooses the hard way.

Can the Asians do it, can the Mexicans do it, the South Americans, Africans, Indonesians, anyone?

Hats off to the culture that produced those warriors and hats off to the western warriors whipping ass over there.

Another well-qualified voice is added to the growing dissent in debunking the discredited greenhouse gas theory

Dr. Charles R. Anderson makes his announcement on his website (June 28, 2010) in joining a growing band of professional scientists, international academics and climate experts prepared to put their reputations on the line and denounce the orthodox views held by an influential clique of discredited government climatologists.

The catalyst for the sudden willingness to speak out against the once widely accepted theory of global warming may be an impressive new online publication, ‘A Greenhouse Effect on the Moon?’ by Dr. Martin Hertzberg, Alan Siddons and Hans Schreuder.

The controversial paper refutes the greenhouse effect (GHG) by showing that by properly testing the theory it can just as easily be ‘proven’ that the Moon also exhibits a greenhouse effect: a nonsense proposition that discredits the entire hypothesis.

NASA Refuses to Reveal Secret Data

Anderson writes, “Despite the fact that NASA scientists are among the foremost promoters of catastrophic global warming due to man's use of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions, NASA scientists have long known that the moon exhibits a warming effect which is similar to the effect which on Earth is said to be due to greenhouse gases.”

Like others who now dispute the GHG theory Anderson berates the secrecy that has kept so much of the data under wraps. NASA is currently facing court action for refusing to disclose its data to independent analysts seeking to check the validity of its global warming claims.

Sydneysiders have shivered through the city's coldest June morning since 1983 after the temperature dropped to 4.7 degrees just before 7.00am this morning.

Weatherzone meteorologist Martin Palmer said several Sydney suburbs had some of their coldest morning's in years, with the temperature dropping to -4 degrees in Richmond, their coolest June morning since records began back in 1995. The temperature dropped to -1.8 degrees in Campbelltown.

Mr Palmer said the cold morning's would continue to at least Thursday.

"Basically there is a big high pressure above us which for the next few days will keep things calm and still but it means very cold nights," he said.

"That will continue for the next few days, we will expect the coldest nights to be over by Thursday and we will have more clouds on the weekend which will keep temperatures up at night."

Daily Mail - The majority of violent inner-city crime is committed by black men, police figures suggest. ...Police hold black men responsible for more than two-thirds of shootings and more than half of robberies and street crimes in London, according to figures released by Scotland Yard.

...The data, which provides the ethnicity of the 18,091 men and boys who police took action against in London during 2009-10, looked at both violent and sexual offences. It found that 67 per cent of those caught by police for gun crimes were black. ...Among those proceeded against for street crimes, including muggings, assault with intent to rob and snatching property, 54 per cent were black males.

...The statistics also suggest that police hold black women accountable for a disproportionate amount of violent crime. On knife crime, 45 per cent of suspected female perpetrators were black. Among those women and girls police took action against for gun crime, 58 per cent were black and in robberies that figure was 52 per cent.

Naturally the usual dishonest weasels are wailing racism and accuse the police of profiling because more blacks are stopped and searched by the police. Yes folks, blacks are shooting and stabbing people and other blacks simply because they're unhappy the cops are stopping them and rightly searching them.

On a side note, remember guns and knives are both illegal in Britain, yet for some time-travel like mystery, people are still getting shot and stabbed in Britain. Just like people are getting stabbed and shot to shit here in Australia, even with our magical gun control laws.

Fox News - Vice President Joe Biden called the manager of a custard shop outside of Milwaukee, Wisc. a “smartass” after the man asked him to lower taxes. Biden made the comment after the Kopp’s Frozen Custard shop manager told him that his dessert would be on the house if he lowered taxes.

...Biden had walked in to Kopp’s mistakenly asking for ice cream instead of custard.

Only a stupid, leftist asshole would walk into a custard shop and ask for ice cream and then get snippy with the owner. Speaking of stupidity.

It might give ordinary Australians a break while governments catch up with all the roadbuilding and housing construction that is needed to cope with the big influx of migrants that we have already had in recent times.

Traffic congestion in all Australian big cities has got a lot worse in recent years because there are a lot more cars on the road now. We need a break while roadworks (more tunnels, bridges, freeways etc.) catch up -- which won't happen overnight

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is breaking free from one of her predecessor's main policy stances by announcing she is not interested in a "big Australia".

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd was in favour of population growth, with his government predicting it to hit around 36 million by 2050, largely through immigration. But Ms Gillard has indicated she will be putting the brakes on immigration in order to develop a more sustainable nation.

"Australia should not hurtle down the track towards a big population," she told Fairfax. "I don't support the idea of a big Australia with arbitrary targets of, say, a 40 million-strong Australia or a 36 million-strong Australia. We need to stop, take a breath and develop policies for a sustainable Australia. "I support a population that our environment, our water, our soil, our roads and freeways, our busses, our trains and our services can sustain."

Which she knows she won't get. Clever: Makes her sound good to the ratbags but costs nothing

Labor failed to convince the public a carbon tax was necessary, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says. Ms Gillard said she was concerned about the government's proposed emissions trading scheme because community consensus had not been achieved.

Asked if she was behind the delay of the ETS because it was hurting Labor, Ms Gillard said she had concerns. "I was concerned that if you were going to do something as big to your economy as put a price on carbon, with the economic transfer that implies... you need a lasting and deep community consensus to do it," Ms Gillard told the Nine Network. "I don't believe we had that last and deep community consensus."

The prime minister said she believed Australia should have a price on carbon. "I will be prepared to argue for a price on carbon... so that we get that lasting and deep community consensus," she said. "But we are not there yet."

Ms Gillard said the government could take practical measures. "I believe in climate change. I believe it's caused by human activity and I believe we have an obligation to act," she said. "And I will be making some statements about some further things we can do to address the challenge of climate change as we work to that lasting and deep community consensus."

National Post - Roving gangs of black-clad protesters who split from the main protest march engaged in violent hit-and-run attacks against corporate and security targets, largely evading police for hours who remained focused on maintaining a secure perimeter around the world leaders meeting for the G20 summit. A sign of the apparent upper hand protesters gained was stark as bright flames and black smoke spewed from two police cruisers that were set ablaze and left untended by emergency crews for perhaps 20 minutes in the late afternoon.

Other police cruisers were abandoned by police and commandeered by protesters. One young man used the car’s loudspeaker to amplify his war cry before it was heavily damaged and looted. A crowd milled about, testing the sirens and urging an inebriated man to continue smashing it. Then even Toronto police headquarters itself, a dominating building on College Street near Bay, was hit. A band of rioters, most with heads covered by hoods and faces masked, hurled rocks, paving bricks and bats.

I saw some of the footage on the evening news, these are leftist scum and will only understand that they are not welcome when force is used to scatter them. But naturally the western world is far too weak-kneed and spineless to do anything about it. If a couple of us headed down there and whipped the lot of these shitbags, we'd be the ones up on charges, that's all the western world seems capable of doing now, shooting itself in the ass.

News.com.au - SOME 2000 protesters have marched noisily through the streets of Toronto, flanked by hundreds of wary police in the first major demonstration against two global summits being hosted by Canada. Brandishing banners proclaiming "Smash imperialism" and "Down with the G20," the demonstration overnight united 30 groups including environmentalists, anarchists and those demanding rights for indigenous peoples, immigrants, gays and women. ...In September black-clad, masked anarchists fought running battles with US police at a G20 summit in Pittsburgh when young anti-G20 protesters defied police orders and tried to march on the summit venue.

You can read the entire article but you won’t any reference to what these scumbags really are. All we get is ‘protesters’ or just groups of people, as if it’s Baptists, Catholics or African Pygmies marching. Just look at what they’re wailing about and anyone with half a brain will know these are leftist, marxist, socialist scum hell bent on overthrowing western democracies and imposing their particular brand of leftist fascism upon the rest of us, violently if they have to.

The article below by centre/Left economist Ross Gittins is about models of the Australian economy but everything said is at least as true of climate models

A new prime minister but the same old problem: the mining industry claims the resource super-profits tax would damage it and the economy, whereas the government claims it would be great for the industry and the economy.

And both sides have "independent modelling" to support their claims.

If that doesn't make you sceptical about the use of modelling in the political debate, it should. But if you need more, try this: the two seemingly diametrically opposed modelling exercises were undertaken by the same commercial firm, KPMG.

We know what Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao wanted (state control of everything) and how they achieved this goal (brutal totalitarianism); but what do their successors today want and how do they hope to achieve it? It's a curiously un-examined subject.

Ernest Sternberg of the University at Buffalo offers answers in an eye-opening article in a recent issue of Orbis, "Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For." His begins by sketching out what the contemporary far Left (as opposed to the "decent Left") opposes and what it wants.

What the Left opposes: The prime enemy is something called Empire (no definite article needed), a supposed global monolith that dominates, exploits, and oppresses the world. Sternberg summarizes the Left's all-embracing indictment of Empire:

people live in poverty, food is contaminated, products are artificial, wasteful consumption is compelled, indigenous groups are dispossessed, and nature itself is subverted. Invasive species run rampant, glaciers melt, and seasons are thrown out of kilter, threatening world catastrophe.

Empire achieves this by means of "economic liberalism, militarism, multinational corporations, corporate media, and technologies of surveillance." Because capitalism causes millions of deaths that a non-capitalism system would eliminate, it also is guilty of mass-murder.

Daily Mail - A shocking picture of the way children are gorging themselves on sweets, chocolates and snacks was revealed yesterday. They are getting fat almost twice as quickly as American youngsters as they eat double the amount of sugary and savoury treats. The disturbing figures suggest that Government efforts to turn back the tide of obesity overwhelming the country's children are failing.

See, there's your problem right there, government. Honestly, what the @#$% happened to us human beings, we've been on this planet for more than 2000 years at least and in all this time up until now, no one has ever heard of any government, council of elders, Atilla the hun or any form of authority having anything to do with children being too fat.

Fast forward to 2010 and apparently government is doing something about fat sacks of crap and we just cannot survive without this blessed government doing something! Did our brains fall out or something, think about it, I can walk into my kitchen right now, grab some bacon, deep fry it, cook up some eggs, a whole bunch of other foods and shove it all down my throat and no government parasite can stop me!

klimaskeptik.cz, a Czech climate skeptic blog, has posted today an interesting article "Judithgate: The IPCC was only one Solar Physicist" (google rough translation). Her name is Judith Lean. On the basis of this "consensus of one" solar physicist, the IPCC proclaimed solar influences upon the climate to be minimal.

Objection to this was raised by the Norwegian government as shown in the AR4 second draft comments below (and essentially dismissed by the IPCC): "I would encourage the IPCC to [re-]consider having only one solar physicist on the lead author team of such an important chapter. In particular since the conclusion of this section about solar forcing hangs on one single paper in which J. Lean is a coauthor. I find that this paper, which certainly can be correct, is given too much weight"...:

Klimaskeptic.cz continues [google translation + editing]: "As I wrote elsewhere (article on pmode ACRIM), Judith Lean, along with Claus Frohlich, are responsible for the scandalous rewriting of graphs of solar activity.

Satellites showed that the TSI (measured in watts) between 1986 and 96 increased by about one third. Judith Lean and Claus Frohlich (authors of the single study noted above) "manipulated" the data.

People who were in charge of the satellites and created the original graphs (the world's best astrophysics: Doug Hoyt, Richard C. Willson), protested in vain against such manipulation.

Wilson: "Fröhlich has made changes that are wrong ... He did not have sufficient knowledge of (satellite) Nimbus7 ... pmode composites are useful for those who argue that global warming may be primarily due to anthropogenic causes."

The Federal legislators of the Australian Labor Party (Australia's major Leftist party) have just done something impossible in America: fired the head of the administration. The man fired, Kevin Rudd, was Australia's Obama in more ways than one. Congress can't fire Obama but under Australia's British ("Westminster") system such things are possible. Below are some comments about Rudd by Andrew Bolt, a prominent Australian conservative commentator. It is striking to note how typically Leftist was Rudd's psychology

Blame the early loss of his father, or just his wiring, but Rudd has had a manic need to assert himself, as if to make up for a deep insecurity. He'd do whatever was needed to win authority over others, or just praise. He'd be whatever you wanted him to be.

Fox News - The Obama administration has tapped an outspoken critic of immigration enforcement on the local level to oversee and promote partnerships between federal and local officials.

Harold Hurtt, a former police chief in Houston and Phoenix, has been hired as the director for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Office of State and Local Coordination. Starting July 6, Hurtt will supervise outreach and communication between ICE, local law enforcement agencies, tribal leaders and representatives from non-governmental organizations.

More and more Americans are angry over the lack of action from their government on the issue of illegal immigration. I know this needs to be said for the benefit of any liberal morons reading this, the majority of Americans want illegals kicked out and the border closed up, not the other way round.

Knowing this obama goes and appoints a fellow who doesn't believe in immigration enforcement to oversee the enforcement of immigration, he is either too stupid to know this, or he knows it and doesn't care what his masters think.

Perhaps obama thinks that Americans are too stupid to see right through this bullshit, in that case, I certainly hope Americans return the favor and inform him and his ilk of scumbags at the next election, that they're too stupid and contemptuous to lead the nation.

A central tenet of Leftism has long been that people are something of a blank state and can be "educated" into becoming whatever the Leftist wants. So Leftists to this day often reject the idea that what we are is largely genetically inherited. The evidence against the Leftist dogma has been piling up over the years, however, and recent research, below, has confirmed in detail what has long been known in general -- that even how happy you usually are is genetically inherited. It has long been known, for instance, that even quadriplegics -- people who have lost the use of their limbs through spinal injury -- end up roughly as happy after their accident as before.

If anything, the report below understates the role of genetics. It was found that genetics explained only 50% of the variance in happiness. But that does NOT mean that environmental factors explained the rest. The remaining variation in the data is much more likely to be due to errors of measurement. Measuring happiness is hard to do with great exactitude.

Leftist intellectuals in recent times have sometimes used the invariance of happiness to argue that governments should be free to do what they like because people's happiness will be unaffected anyway. That obnoxious argument assumes, however, that what people want is unimportant. Leftists do often seem to believe that

News.com.au - JULIA Gillard is "honoured" to become Australia's first female prime minister as Kevin Rudd struggles to keep his composure during his last speech as leader. Ms Gillard is expected to make a full statement shortly and will be sworn in as prime minister by Governor-General Quentin Bryce at 12.30pm (AEST) Mr Rudd was close to tears and his voice wavered as he listed his achievements in office during a press conference.

The fellow that we thought would be our PM and voted for is gone. This is how the left side of politics does things, knifing each other, betrayal, treachery, it's on for young and old. For some strange reason the electorate out there believes that they'll treat us differently when this is what they do to each other, go figure.

News.com.au - KEVIN Rudd this morning looks certain to lose his prime ministership in a caucus ballot after he and Julia Gillard last night spent a desperate 2 1/2 hours in failed talks. Key Labor powerbrokers yesterday moved on Mr Rudd, telling the Deputy Prime Minister she had the numbers to win. But Mr Rudd made it clear he would not step aside and that his enemies would have to force him out.

I'm sure most of the electorate has long forgotten but I find it ironic that this is happening in the political party that promised us at previous elections that voting for their opponents then-current leaders would mean a vote for someone else who was far more dangerous. Now we know the labor scum were projecting their own dishonesty onto others. In NSW we can't even get one labor minister to serve out as the minister for the full term, and we're on our third premier of NSW now, who knows who will be next.

News.com.au - CHRISTIAN Democratic Party MP Fred Nile has succeeded in introducing a bill to ban the wearing of the burqa in the NSW Upper House. Mr Nile introduced his private member's bill, seeking to ban the wearing of the burqa and other face veils in public, shortly after 8pm yesterday (AEST). Last month, a debate on the same bill was voted down by the NSW Upper House.

Naturally, the usual leftist scum [greens] are caterwauling about it, wailing about racism, bigotry and what not. The fact that islam is not a race simply bounces off their thick skulls, like every other fact out there. The fact that they would never allow Christians such special treatment because of their religion bounces right off their hypocritical skulls. You see, it's not all religion that leftists want to shun, it's only Christianity.

I doubt very much that this will actually become law in this state, you see everything first has to turn to shit and no other option has to be available, like in Europe, before enough of us will figure out ass from elbow. There is no such thing as learning from the mistakes of others these days, that and the fact that our politicians are largely gutless weasels.

None the less, I commend Fred Nile for taking this brave stance against the burqa, he is 100% right on banning this thing, no one else in this country is allowed to walk around with their face covered. You can't walk into a bank with your face covered, you can't drive around and refuse to show your face to a police officer. No one is allowed to do it, except muslims and that is not right.

No matter how much leftists want to please their islamist pimps, neither they nor muslims should have extra privileges that are denied to the rest of us, if they don't like it, feel free to eff off from Australia, there are flights leaving from every major city by the hour.

BNP party supporter Bamber wrote the literature entitled The Heroin Trade and was responsible for leading a campaign which sent up to 30,000 of the leaflets to people throughout the north of England over 12 months.

It demanded that Muslims should “apologise and pay compensation” for a trade which he said had its roots predominately in Pakistan and Afghanistan....

At a previous hearing David Perry QC, prosecuting, told the court that the case was about “hate speech” which was intended to provoke hatred of both the concept of Islam and also the followers of Islam, Muslims...

What role does the media play in curbing climate change? That's the question a diverse group of participants will grapple with at Deutsche Welle's annual Global Media Forum in Bonn which opens on June 21....

The annual media conference in Bonn brings together an eclectic mix of environment campaigners, entrepreneurs, journalists, artists, scientists, lawmakers and civil rights activists from around the world. "The Global Media Forum is international, it's interdisciplinary and interactive," said Ralf Nolting, head of Deutsche Welle Media Services, the organizers of the conference.

The aim of the meeting is to get key players from a range of fields at one table to identify problems and come up with solutions – this time the subject is the role of the media in covering climate change.

Countering climate change denial

There's little doubt that it's a timely topic. A recent international study conducted by market research institute Synovate in cooperation with Deutsche Welle, which polled 13,000 people, shows that a rethink of attitudes towards climate change and sustainability is sorely needed.

Deutsche Welle chief Erik Bettermann said he was particularly concerned about the growing denial of the seriousness of the problem. “We've been forced to conclude that knowledge of the effects of climate change is widely accepted, but at the same time the number of those who think 'it's not that bad,' is increasing – it's 10 percent after all," Bettermann said. In 2008, that number was found to be at four percent.

Among others, the former BBC correspondent, now psychotherapist, Mark Brayne will look at some of the psychological reasons for climate change denial.

Ralf Nolting said it was an important trend one couldn't afford to ignore. "It's simply the genetic disposition of people the older they get – that includes most people in key positions," Nolting said."

"In short, if someone has turned coal into energy all his life as an operator of a coal-fired electricity plant, then it's suddenly a psychological problem for him to accept solar cells or wind energy."

Fox News - Voters in the eastern Nebraska city of Fremont on Monday approved a ban on hiring or renting property to illegal immigrants, the latest proposal in a series of immigration regulations taken up by communities around the country. About 57 percent of voters in Fremont supported the proposal, according to unofficial results that still must be certified by the election commissioner. The measure is likely to face a long and costly court battle, with the American Civil Liberties Union saying it will try to block it before it even goes into effect.

Oh yeah, you can always count on the aclu scum to side with non-Americans, ironic isn't it, the American-civil liberties union fighting the liberties of real Americans. One wonders why these cockroaches aren't over in China or Iran carping about effing civil liberties. Oh I forgot, those societies are well and truly @#$%ed, so no work for leftist scum is needed there.

The Tigers are brutal Marxist terrorists -- the last group Australia needs

SRI Lankan officials have warned that a vessel carrying up to 200 asylum-seekers could be headed for Australia.

As Kevin Rudd faces rising internal concern that the issue is hurting Labor, the Prime Minister will today hold a meeting of the full ministry to mark what could be the last parliamentary sitting week before the election, amid rising leadership speculation. Labor backbenchers said yesterday they had "sent a message" to Mr Rudd's office on asylum-seekers in the past fortnight, and several frontbenchers confirmed it was a live issue in the electorate.

As the Rudd government faces a looming deadline on whether to lift a three-month suspension of Sri Lankan asylum claims, the country's high commissioner to Australia, Senaka Walgampaya, has urged the Prime Minister to extend the freeze.

Australia has previously sought assistance from Indonesia to turn back a boatload of 260 illegal migrants heading for Australia, and successfully repelled the largest boatload attempting to enter Australian waters since the election of the Rudd government in 2007.

The high commissioner said yesterday he had credible information that a boat, believed to be connected to remnants of the Tamil Tigers, had upwards of 200 people on it. "My information is that there is such a boat," Mr Walgampaya said yesterday. "Earlier on, the boat was going to Canada; now it is confirmed that they are trying to come to Australia."

Mr Walgampaya also called on the government to extend the freeze on Sri Lankan asylum claims, saying there was evidence it had been effective. "I would certainly like to continue as it is," he said. "I think boat arrivals have reduced as a result. If they continued it, that would be good."

On June 10, The Australian reported that the Philippines Coast Guard had in May issued an alert for the MV Sun Sea, formerly known as the Harin Panich 19.

Mr Walgampaya said the venture was being organised by remnants of the Liberation of Tamil Tiger Eelam (Tamil Tigers). "We are told that the boat itself does not belong to the LTTE but they are people who have links to the LTTE," Mr Walgampaya said.

Ahead of today's ministry meeting in Canberra, three Labor frontbenchers conceded asylum-seekers were an issue in the electorate, and one pointed to the Prime Minister himself telling the ALP caucus the government needed to sell its message better. "There's a a strongly entrenched debate around asylum-seekers," one frontbencher said. "People are asking: what is Labor going to do about boatpeople," another Labor MP told The Australian. "Efforts are being made to get that through to the Prime Minister's office."

Another Labor frontbencher said: "We've all recognised that it's certainly an issue and we certainly need to communicate what we are doing. "At the moment, there's a misunderstanding that's being whipped up by talkback radio. "The Prime Minister said that we need to better communicate what we're doing in this area."

The remarks came as outspoken Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry told a World Refugee Day rally in Melbourne that there had been a "failure of leadership" on the issue of asylum-seekers. "If you ask the right questions, you'll get the right answers from the Australian public and I think they've been led down the wrong track by a failure of leadership," Professor McGorry said.

Warmists have been riding the wrong horse. A new paleoclimate study shows that it is methane, not CO2 that affects warming. CO2 levels are tied to ocean circulation.

A small caution: The report below is based on a press release. There seems to be no peer-reviewed paper as yet

By examining 800,000-year-old polar ice, scientists increasingly are learning how the climate has changed since the last ice melt and that carbon dioxide has become more abundant in the Earth's atmosphere.

For two decades, French scientist Jérôme Chappellaz has been examining ice cores collected from deep inside the polar ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica. His studies on the interconnecting air spaces of old snow -- or firn air -- in the ice cores show that the roughly 40 percent increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the Earth's last deglaciation can be attributed in large part to changes in the circulation and biological activity of the oceanic waters surrounding Antarctica.

News.com.au - KEVIN Rudd may be losing support among adults but there's one group who still like him - teenagers. Unfortunately for the prime minister most of these Australians can't vote yet. Among this group, 28 per cent of them wanted Mr Rudd to keep his job after the election, a poll by youth website Habbo Hotel has found.

Just wait until they have to move out of home, get a damn job and have to start paying off the debt that kev has gotten us into, then let's see if facebook and twitter boy is still popular.

Daily Mail - Taxpayers are paying millions of pounds to Britons living abroad who claim they are too sick to work. Expats living in countries including Spain, France, Cyprus and Portugal are claiming incapacity benefits of nearly £46million a year. Incredibly many of the 10,000 claimants have been receiving the payments for more than five years without having their cases reviewed.

Daily Mail - ...The Government has recruited ex-Labour Cabinet minister John Hutton to take the axe to state employees' retirement funds, which have created a staggering £1trillion black hole in the public finances. He is expected to draw up plans to hit public sector workers with a 'pensions levy', which would require them to contribute far more if they want to continue to enjoy the benefits of their schemes. Charging an extra 2.5 per cent of salary in pension contributions will raise about £3.2billion a year.

So profound is the hypocrisy of the mainstream media in the English-speaking world that racial violence against a significant but still small minority in a major Western city has been ignored. The big rally against persecution by Chinese in Paris and its unpleasant aftermath seems not to have attracted a single report in English. The report below is a rough translation from a French source

Thousands of Chinese marched Sunday in the Belleville district of Paris to protest against the violence which they say targets them, an event that ended with a few skirmishes.

Approximately 8,500 people, according to police, took part in the march organized by a group of Franco-Chinese associations between rue de Belleville and the Place du Colonel Fabien in a neighborhood transformed last ten years by an influx of new Asian immigrants. According to organizers, it is the largest event ever held in this community in France.

"Make Belleville a peaceful neighborhood," chanted the demonstrators, alternating whistles and slogans in French and Chinese and wearing t-shirts and stickers on which were inscribed the words "Safety for Everyone".

...I do believe the evidence. Which leads me, personally, to the bleak conclusion that the human race is stuffed. The current financial crisis is merely the curtain raiser to a grand opera of social and ecological collapse. Our children - forget our grandchildren, I'm talking about my own kids, aged 14, 11 and 9 - are going to live in a world in which major cities are flooded, fertile plains become deserts, populations run out of food and water, rivers run dry, fishing grounds become dead zones, our rainforests and living coral reefs become curiosities of history.

Oh my godless, 6 freaking years, that's it! 6 years before we become curiosities of history, he doesn't mention to whom exactly will we become these curiosities of history, seeing as we'll all be dead and gone. In the article he didn't mention anything about his city home being up for sale in lieu of this dire news. He curiously didn't mention anything about the log cabin he'll be building up on the highest mountain either, for you know... when the floods come.

On this day in 1910 my grandparents on my mother's side were married. See the photo below. He looks a rather handsome devil and the ladies were clearly into big hats even then.

The couple were Joseph and Margaret and he was the eldest son of another Joseph. The Josephs are clearly hard to get away from. That my second name is Joseph and that my son is Joseph rather reinforces that impression. And my convict ancestor was Joseph too.

Maybe I should make a donation to the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. It is an Australian order, after all. And my son Joseph went to a school named after their founder.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’

Seventy years later, Barack Obama gave us this:

What has defined us as a nation since our founding is the capacity to shape our destiny—our determination to fight for the America we want for our children. Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get there. We know we’ll get there.

It was one of the worst—and most revealing—lines ever uttered by an American president. Winston Churchill echoed the Psalms; Barack Obama echoed Alice in Wonderland:

“Cheshire Puss … Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the cat.

“I don’t much care where –” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the cat.

“— so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the cat, “if only you walk long enough.”

This week, Obama gave us this frightening insight into his presidency—he does not care where he is leading us, but we are sure to get there—and in so doing smashed the myth that he would one day stand beside Churchill as one of the greatest orators in modern history. It was not, suffice it to say, his finest hour.

Astute observers of the scene might recall one of the first things Obama did when he took office back in early 2009:

A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.

The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush's tenure.

But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: "Thanks, but no thanks."

Removing that which symbolized the greatness of Winston Churchill was an omen. In its place now stands the ineptness of Barack Obama.

By Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich, a German-born economist. Germans have always fitted in well when they come to Australia. I've known many of them -- JR

After Germany had convincingly demolished the Socceroos at the World Cup, I was not sure what to expect in the office, with me being German and all that. Quips about Per Mertesacker’s hand-ball in the German penalty box? Discussions about the harsh red card for Tim Cahill? Speculations that the new Adidas ball gave the Germans an unfair advantage?

As it turned out, I got none of that. Australians, or at least my dear colleagues, are far too nice for such unsportsmanlike conduct. Instead, they congratulated me on the German win. ‘You must be so happy,’ one of them said.

Well, actually, I wasn’t. My preferred result had been a draw as I feel an emotional attachment to both my native country and my new home. When the national anthems were played before the match, it was Advance Australia Fair that gave me goose bumps, not the German anthem. Although it’s quite a challenge to feel patriotic for any country at 4.30 am.

The match made me realise how easy it is to develop an emotional bond with Australia.

Perhaps it is even stronger for migrants like me than for the natives. When CIS received a Socceroos’ fan scarf as a promotional gift this week, I quickly volunteered to hang it up in my office. Nobody else had wanted it. Possibly that was a reaction to the 4-0 defeat, or maybe they just didn’t care about soccer?

Maybe there is a lesson in this for our current discussion about migration and population growth.

Many commentators assume that Australia’s character will change beyond recognition as more and more people arrive on these shores. They seem to believe implicitly that there is not much about Australia these migrants could love.

My own experience points to the very opposite. Australia is such a friendly, fascinating country that its emotional appeal to new arrivals couldn’t be greater. It’s a country you want to call home even before the ink on your visa has dried.

The social result of migration could be counter-intuitive: it may very well strengthen Australian patriotism, not undermine it. It may reinforce social cohesion, not destroy it.

The key to such integration are not strict limits on the number of migrants but finding the right migrants: migrants who not only bring their skills to this country but are also willing to become a part of it. This aspect is often missing in our population debate, which almost exclusively focuses on the number of migrants.

As for myself, I’ll try my best to become more Australian. Supporting the Socceroos is a start, but please allow me a few decades to understand cricket.

When the thug is white, we are told. See below. But there is never any mention if the thug is black. But that is information in its own way, of course. We don't normally find out that the thug is black until he is sentenced and his name is reported. African names are usually distinctive. In the case of younger offenders, however, even the name is usually suppressed

A HOUSEMATE of an Indian student whose fatal stabbing in January caused a diplomatic row between Australia and India has congratulated police for charging a 15-year-old boy with his friend's murder. Sandeep Sandeep lived with accounting graduate Nitin Garg, who was stabbed on his way to work at the Yarraville Hungry Jack's on a Saturday night, and described him as ''like a younger brother to me''.

Mr Garg was stabbed in Cruickshank Park, then staggered 300 metres to the restaurant. An ambulance was called but he died shortly after arriving at hospital. Mr Sandeep, who had spoken to Mr Garg's family in India, told The Age last night it was helpful someone had been charged.

Daily Mail - A woman who sparked a £150,000 police investigation by ripping her clothes and giving herself a black eye, then lying about a violent sex attack, has been told she will be jailed. Four students spent nearly three days behind bars as a result of the convincing injuries Leyla Ibrahim inflicted on herself, with one of the suspects attempting to kill himself.

...It emerged Ibrahim invented the attack after a row with a male friend when he refused to lend her the money for a taxi home after a night out. Deciding she ‘wanted to teach people a lesson’, a court heard she cut and tore the blue frilly dress she was wearing as well as her black leggings and bra, leaving her breasts partially exposed.

Good, she was perfectly willing to let other people pay for a terrible crime they did not commit. She won't get the same as a rapist, however she should pay a hefty price for pulling a stunt like this. The other thing is that she's making life for real victims of rape so much harder.

Fox News - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview with a TV station in Ecuador that the Obama administration "will be bringing" suit against Arizona for its immigration law, though the Justice Department for weeks has said that the issue is under review.

Well then, bring it on hills, you're pretty much taking on the American people on this issue, not just the state of Arizona. And I'll take the time to remind hills, your government is already on the nose with the American people, so can you really afford to piss them off even more, well can you hills?

I really don't think they will, they've been 'reviewing' is for a while now and I think it's fair to say they've come up empty-handed, it seems the case is water-tight and no matter how much the liberal nut-base wants to impose it' brand of fascism upon the rest of the people, even the courts won't let them. None the less, if they want to, it looks like the people are fired up and ready to kick some ass!

Daily Mail - Ethical shoppers are being warned that free-range eggs may be less healthy than those from caged birds. Scientists found that free-range eggs contain at least five times higher levels of certain pollutants than normal eggs.

Around 17 per cent of the free range eggs had levels that European regulators would have deemed unsafe for consumption. The study was carried out in Taiwan but the findings will raise concerns about the safety of eating free-range chicken eggs in the UK.

It's a bit like those lycra-clad cyclists riding to work to save the planet, get fit, feel very sanctimonious about it and all that, but while they're on our roads taking up precious road space and pissing everyone off, we're still having the last laugh. You see they're sucking in all our exhaust emissions and screwing their own health.

Prompted by strong public opinion against their previous "open door" policies. Since all the Afghans passed through several countries on their way to Australia, NONE of them were in fact seeking refuge. They had refuge as soon as they arrived in Pakistan

MORE than 40 per cent of Afghan asylum-seekers are being rejected as refugees, down sharply on the 95 per cent who were being waved through less than one year ago. Immigration Minister Chris Evans yesterday said more than 220 Afghans had been denied "in the last month or two". "They are now getting rejected at quite large rates," Senator Evans said. "The last percentage I saw was over 40 per cent."

Afghans comprise the biggest group of asylum-seekers who arrived at Christmas Island last year and so far this year.

Crowding on Christmas Island has prompted the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to look for mainland options to house detainees.

Senator Evans said offers were flowing in from organisations on the mainland wanting to house asylum-seekers from Christmas Island. Those making approaches included maverick West Australian MP Wilson Tuckey, who suggested asylum-seekers could live at a pub in the wheatbelt town of Southern Cross.

Does human emission of CO2 cause global warming? This is a scientific question and can be answered using the scientific method with observed global mean temperature data.

A graph of global mean temperature from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia is shown in the above graph

The first period is from 1910 to 1940 & the second period is 60-years latter from 1970 to 2000. After human emission of CO2 for 60-years, the rate of change of global mean temperature of 0.15 deg C per decade from 1970 to 2000 is nearly identical to that of 0.16 deg C per decade from 1910 to 1940. That is, after a 5-times increase in human emission of CO2, there was no increase in the rate of increase of global mean temperature. This data contradicts the theory that human emission of CO2 causes global warming.

In addition, the data shows that the pattern of the global mean temperature is cyclic as shown in the following graph.

This graph shows the following:

1) 30-years of global cooling from 1880 to 1910.2) 30-years of global warming from 1910 to 1940.3) 30-years of global cooling from 1940 to 1970.4) 30-years of global warming from 1970 to 2000.

Based on the above pattern, assuming there is no shift in climate in the coming 20 years compared to the last 130 years, it is reasonable to predict:

5) 30-years of global cooling from 2000 to 2030.

If this prediction is realized then the cyclic nature of global mean temperature will be confirmed. Otherwise, it will be rejected. This will be clear just in the next five to ten years.

If this cyclic nature of global mean temperature is confirmed, this will disprove man made global warming.

Fox News - Louisiana voters think President George W. Bush did a better job handling the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina than President Obama has done in the wake of the BP oil spill, according to a new poll. The Public Policy Polling survey showed 50 percent of state voters rated Bush's performance in 2005 as better than Obama's. Just 35 percent picked Obama. The survey by PPP, a Democratic-owned firm, comes as the president tries to inspire confidence in his administration's response to the BP oil spill.

It's a similar situation in Australia, our leftist PM kevin rudd has gone from unbelievably high opinion polls to shitter status in a matter of months. Just the other day we heard people were turning their radios off when they hear the fellow speak, you know it's bad when people are irritated by the mere sound of your voice.

What makes this worse is that even with all the ass-polishing by the biased msm, the polls are tanking for obama and rudd. If you're a conservative with bad polls, we know it's not as bad because you aren't catching a break from the media. But if you're a leftist doing bad in the polls even with the media help, that means you really suck ass.

In other news, which barry obama and kevin rudd might want to learn from, Europe is rediscovering fiscal responsibility, bit by bit.

Daily Mail - A baby owl had a lucky escape after it fell from its nest into a zoo enclosure - and came face to face with a lion. The fluffy tawny owlet managed to survive for three days after it tumbled from a branch and landed inches from the lioness.

Margaret Thatcher was the first leader to warn of global warming - but also the first to see the flaws in the climate change orthodoxy

A persistent claim made by believers in man-made global warming – they were at it again last week – is that no politician was more influential in launching the worldwide alarm over climate change than Margaret Thatcher. David Cameron, so the argument runs, is simply following in her footsteps by committing the Tory party to its present belief in the dangers of global warming, and thus showing himself in this respect, if few others, to be a loyal Thatcherite.

The truth behind this story is much more interesting than is generally realised, not least because it has a fascinating twist. Certainly, Mrs Thatcher was the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming, back in 1988. With her scientific background, she had fallen under the spell of Sir Crispin Tickell, then our man at the UN. In the 1970s, he had written a book warning that the world was cooling, but he had since become an ardent convert to the belief that it was warming. Under his influence, as she recorded in her memoirs, she made a series of speeches, in Britain and to world bodies, calling for urgent international action, and citing evidence given to the US Senate by the arch-alarmist Jim Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

She found equally persuasive the views of a third prominent convert to the cause, Dr John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office. She backed him in the setting up of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, and promised the Met Office lavish funding for its Hadley Centre, which she opened in 1990, as a world authority on "human-induced climate change".

Hadley then linked up with East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to become custodians of the most prestigious of the world's surface temperature records (alongside another compiled by Dr Hansen). This became the central nexus of influence driving a worldwide scare over global warming; and so it remains to this day – not least thanks to the key role of Houghton (now Sir John) in shaping the first three mammoth reports which established the IPCC's unequalled authority on the subject.

In bringing this about, Mrs Thatcher played an important part. It is not widely appreciated, however, that there was a dramatic twist to her story. In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed "Hot Air and Global Warming", she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views.

She voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us. Pouring scorn on the "doomsters", she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of "costly and economically damaging" schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5C rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.

In other words, long before it became fashionable, Lady Thatcher was converted to the view of those who, on both scientific and political grounds, are profoundly sceptical of the climate change ideology. Alas, what she set in train earlier continues to exercise its baleful influence to this day. But the fact that she became one of the first and most prominent of "climate sceptics" has been almost entirely buried from view.

A murder in your area lowers your IQ -- even if you don't know about the murder concerned? It's totally implausible but Leftists never give up in their hatred of around 100 years of IQ research that show IQ to be mostly genetic.

The author below found that people living in areas where a crime had occurred recently have lower IQs. But what sort of area is likely to have experienced a crime recently? A area that has high rates of crime generally and an area where anybody with brains would NOT live. Note that criminals have long been known to have generally low IQs and very low levels of educational attainment.

The statement below to the effect that "The effects wear off after a week to nine days" is simply not supportable from the data available. It is just another perverse guess. You would need before-and-after data on the same person to substantiate that claim and the author simply did not have such data.

Almost all of you Conservative folk out there know about the free market, how it works, how it needs to thrive and more importantly, how it always wins. Bear with me dear reader and I'll show you how this is playing out right before our very eyes.

First off we have Britain, recently went to elections and got a sort-of Conservative and a sort-of leftist coalition government. All that aside, they've just figured out that public sector pensions will cost taxpayers a shocking £18 billion this year. Apparently and you'd better be sitting down for this, this is also the combined annual budget of the British Army and Navy!

It's so bad that the leader of the leftist side of the coalition government even came to the conclusion - shit, that's a lot of money, this is simply unaffordable; or the political equivalent thereof. You know you're in dire straits when even leftists are surprised at the waste. Thankfully it seems the Brits are prepared to learn from their past mistakes and make some cuts to their spending.

I have obtained the same data used in this study as Kearney et al. and am unable to confirm the results for the historical observation data. I count 239 observations made in Oct-Dec from 1942 to 2009. The annual data show a wide range of earliest observation dates (Figure 1), and at face value the use of 5 year or 10 year averages appears to be a convenient statistical method that hides the very wide spread of observation dates.

Yahoo! News - World Cup organisers Monday ruled out a ban on the vuvuzela horns that have been driving some players and broadcasters mad, with FIFA president Sepp Blatter defending the instrument on Twitter. ..."I don?t see banning the music traditions of fans in their own country. Would you want to see a ban on the fan traditions in your country?" Blatter wrote.

Bullshit! See below, the color of your skin makes all the difference. Whatever non-whites do is just fine no matter how irritating, primitive or savage, whatever whitey does and wherever he does it is all wrong. Racism is well and truly alive folks, just that it's the acceptable form now.

The man carrying a legal bomb into courtroom 11A in the NSW Supreme Court building on Friday morning did not look menacing and is not menacing under normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances. This was cultural war. The legal bomb was brought to court by the once leonine figure of Clive Evatt, a veteran defamation lawyer who now walks with the aid of a cane, on which his severely bent frame leans heavily.

As Evatt took his place at the plaintiff's bench, the man on whose instructions he was acting, Keysar Trad - a thickset, bearded man wearing a grey suit, blue shirt and tie - sat alone in the back row of the public gallery.

Trad is no stranger to litigation. Over many years he has expended untold hours making formal complaints to the NSW Supreme Court, the Administrative Decisions Tribunal, the Anti-Discrimination Board, the Human Rights Commission, the Press Council, other review bodies and, above all, the media, where he has operated as a quote-machine representing the Muslim community in Australia.

IT is surely one of the great paradoxes of this age that while many of our cleverest minds have fallen headlong in love with peoples whose causes are more or less entirely alien to us, we can find no stirring in our hearts for peoples whose greatest hope is to become . . . well, more like us.

Thus we artlessly dispatched our hearts on a sentimental journey to Gaza designed for our benefit by the canny Islamists in Ankara and their bloodstained allies in Gaza; people who, in any other context, would treat our Western soft-heartedness and woolly-mindedness with undisguised contempt.

And yet our hearts have no space whatever for the thousands of young Iranian students who, on Saturday, defied the threats of their government, the beatings of the extra-legal militias, and the pusillanimity of their erstwhile leaders, merely to ask for the right to have their votes treated with dignity, rather than being fabricated out of some dodgy Russian software in Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

Calling it a matter of "hate speech", PayPal has declared jihad on Atlas Shrugged.

Make your own decisions, but I closed my account with their service.Neither am I using ebay any longer.When I swore to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic", I meant it.

The First Amendment applies to EVERY American.

Completely ignoring the fact that what Pamela Gellar put up is decidedly NOT "hate speech" (not when there's a whole mess of frothin'-at-the-mouth-and-nostrils muj's looking to kill as many of us infidels as possible), I've got a whole other problem with this.

The basis for even the CONCEPT of "hate speech" presumes that SOMEONE MUST DECIDE PRECISELY WHAT IT ISTHAT CONSTITUTES "hate speech".

News.com.au - A GROUP of more than 30 gunmen have stormed a northern Mexican drug rehabilitation centre and opened fire, killing 19 people and wounding four. The rampage, the latest in a wave of violence linked to the narcotics trade, took place in the northern city of Chihuahua near midnight on Thursday, when the gunmen arrived aboard six trucks, according to a federal police official.

If this is what these savages are doing to each other down in Mexico, can you imagine what they'll be doing to Americans if they got half a chance. Most Americans with a brain will know that they'd much rather not find out first hand and would rather the border be secured to keep scum like this out. And I'm sure democrats will tell you, hand on heart, that they wouldn't want this happening to their beloved American constituents who they love so much. And before drawing the next breath, move straight onto attacking anyone who dares to secure the border and deport illegals as racist and full of hate.

Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says. To show my respect for their wisdom, I have just had an excellent dinner of roast lamb

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: "Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."

The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions.

The panel of experts ranked products, resources, economic activities and transport according to their environmental impacts. Agriculture was on a par with fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth, they said.

Ernst von Weizsaecker, an environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel, said: "Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products - livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides."....

Quite normal for Leftists. Rudd's predecessor as leader of the Labor Party -- Mark Latham -- was the same and all conservative bloggers know how rage-filled are the emails and comments that they get from Leftists. Rage and hate are of course closely allied emotions. Hate is just a bit quieter about it

Kevin Rudd is surrounded by c**** and everything is f*****. Let me explain. I don't mean the Prime Minister is making mistakes, or that his government is hopeless. I mean he has a potty mouth. He swears all the time, about everything, no matter whom he's addressing.

He likes the f-bomb almost as much as he loves the c-word. He's f****** sick of p***** saying he's just a nerdy f****** bureaucrat, all right? It's just bulls***! He's as tough as the next b******. Got it? Anyone who says otherwise can eat s***.

And he desperately wants us all to hear him loud and clear. In the past week, political geeks such as me have been chuckling over the revelation that the Prime Minister interrupted high-level climate-change negotiations at the Copenhagen summit last year to observe: "Those Chinese f****** are trying to rat-f*** us." Rudd spoke this sentence to a roomful of journalists, as part of a background briefing at the summit.

WSJ - Mosab Hassan Yousef is a best-selling author who wrote "Son of Hamas" about his life as a Palestinian who became an informant for Israeli intelligence. He's probably near the top of every Islamist terror hit list, yet, incredibly enough, the U.S. may soon deport him as a terror threat. In 2007, Mr. Yousef came to the United States, where he converted to Christianity from Islam and applied for political asylum. The request was denied in February 2009, Mr. Yousef says, on grounds that he was potentially "a danger to the security of the United States" and had "engaged in terrorist activity." His case has automatically proceeded to the deportation stage, and on June 30 at 8 a.m. he will appear before Judge Rico Bartolomei in Homeland Security Immigration Court in San Diego.

Homeland Security is well aware of the author's history, and in fact is using it against him. According to Mr. Yousef, a letter from Homeland Security attorney Kerri Calcador cites passages in "Son of Hamas" as evidence of his connection to terrorist leaders and suggests that the work he did for Hamas while spying for Israel provided aid to terrorists. "At a bare minimum, evidence of the respondent's transport of Hamas members to safe houses . . . indicates that the respondent provided material support to a [Tier I] terrorist organization," the U.S. lawyer wrote. Hat tip Right Truth. More at Save Mosab Yousef.

You know you're morally confused, lost and effed in the head when your first instinct it not to approve this fellows application for asylum but to open up the possibility of sending him back to the barbaric savages that he helped you to fight. The mere fact that this is even being considered shows how bone-stupid the west has become, just think of the message that anyone out there entertaining any notion of helping the west is going to take from this.

Muslim female makes demonstrably false accusations against police on a statutory declaration but that's OK -- and hushed up as well? Making a false statement on a statutory declaration is an offence that should lead to a prosecution. It seems that the NSW police force is just about as gutless about "minorities" as is the Victoria police. One would have thought that they would be very zealous to uphold their reputation where they can

As I was driving today I happened to listen to Jason Morrison’s ‘Drive’ show at around 3 pm. He mentioned the story of the Sydney policeman who happened to stop a veiled lady recently because he had a well founded suspicion that she was not driving well and that her ‘P’ plate sign was not affixed properly to the car. This policeman asked to see the lady’s license. Of course to check her license the policeman had to see the lady’s face and you know what that means for a Muslim feminista.

Instant outrage. This lady did what any oppressed victim who has been asked to show her driver’s license would do .She went straight to the media and complained that the policeman was a racist, shouted at her, grabbed her veil and wanted to pull it off. Not a shy little hyacinth, this lass went to Channel 7 and told her tearful story aided and abetted by her Muslim handlers.

Thing is, she forgot she is in a western country and that not all the media have lost their marbles. As Jason Morrison related, Channel 7 contacted the policeman in question after she gave her tearful opera buffa version of events. And guess what? The policeman had filmed the entire proceedings with the lachrimose lady. And then guess what the filming revealed? THE TRUTH. And the truth differed significantly from what the dodgy Muslim lady driver said.

Fox News - A 7-year-old boy was murdered by the Taliban in an apparent act of retribution this week. Afghan officials said that the child was accused of spying for U.S. and NATO forces and hanged from a tree in southern Afghanistan. Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the provincial governor of Helmand, said that the killing happened days after the boy's grandfather, Abdul Woodod Alokozai, spoke out against militants in their home village. Ahmadi said: "His grandfather is a tribal elder in the village and the village is under the control of the Taliban. His grandfather said some good things about the government and he formed a small group of people to stand against the Taliban. That's why the Taliban killed his grandson in revenge."

Video of more Taliban savagery -

We in the west need to get it past our thick skulls, all cultures are NOT equal, all faiths are NOT rosy and wonderful, some cultures are plainly primitive savagery and evil masquerading as legitimate beliefs and deserve nothing but contempt, not a fecking place at the table.

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is critical of the arrogance of Kevvy waking up one fine morning and deciding all by his little self that he will impose a big new tax on one of Australia's most important employers and exporters -- the mining industry.

Fox News - The New York rabbi who videotaped veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas telling Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine" says he has received numerous death threats and thousands of pieces of hate mail in the days since Thomas' abrupt retirement.

Rabbi David Nesenoff said he is facing an "overload" of threatening e-mails calling for a renewed Holocaust and targeting his family — a barrage of hate he said he planned to report to the police on Wednesday. "This ticker tape keeps coming in," Nesenoff told FoxNews.com. "We got one specific one saying, 'We're going to kill the Jews; watch your back.'"

..."This is something that I thought was a couple of people here or there, [but] it's mainstream and it's frightening," the Long Island rabbi said. "[Thomas] is just a little cherry on top of this huge, huge sundae of hate in America." Hat tip Eastern Right.

Well I for one am not surprised in the least, we've all known for a long time about the overwhelming amount of hate over on the left. Ask any Conservative who dares to enter the public sphere or dares to utter a word against some of the disgusting things the left cherish and they'll tell you about the hate and physical violence they're subjected to or threatened with.

Tolerance and diversity is just a sick facade of the left, go against them and there will be neither for you, you'll be lucky to emerge with your skin intact. They're a lot like the primitive and savage muslims they're now allied with to restart the gas chambers and finish what their beloved hero hitler was stopped from doing.

Anyway to finish off, here is a small sample of the vile and filthy hate this poor fellow received for daring to video-tape the old Jew-hating biased leftist reporter Helen Thomas.

Behind our "Western" heart

As the name of this blog implies, we have always welcomed contributors and readers from anywhere in the Western world. But there is also something else behind the name. The blog originated in Australia and most contributions come from Australia. And that is very fitting. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart -- and you will see that in the posts appearing here. Events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Some brief observations about Leftism

As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His excellent short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down. If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!) If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left.

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among people who should know better, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

“Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics.” -- C.J. Keyser

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931–2005: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in a MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

You can email me (John Ray) here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR"

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)